


Sun-Joon Lost In Sojourn

by BodhiSeongBae



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Classical Music, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Art, Canon - Korean Drama, Contest Entry, Crossover, Death, Dream Bubbles, F/M, Flirting, Heaven, Hell, Implied Sexual Content, Inspired by Art, Inspired by Music, Kinda, Korean Characters, Late Night Conversations, Life & Death, Lots of Thinking, Love, Or Is It?, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, POV Original Character, Painting, Partial Nudity, Peace, Philosophy, Piano, Questions, Seduction, Sleep, Slice of Life, Talking, Thought Projection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 17:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16246691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BodhiSeongBae/pseuds/BodhiSeongBae
Summary: Sun-Joon awakens in an undetermined dimension between heaven and hell, building hovering in the highest of clouds along with a fiery-haired woman playing an aged piano. As the music builds, Sun-Joon discovers the reasons behind his sudden transportation into sojourn: a temporary location in which one resides.Is Sun-Joon's sojourn his sanctuary, or is this scene a figment of his imagination as he succumbs to death?Inspired by an artwork (Shari Cerney)





	Sun-Joon Lost In Sojourn

 

There was nothing in the world before I opened my eyes.

 

I had no memory, no opinions, no train of thought, nothing to guide my senses, similar to a newborn baby in a nursery—I was simply existing, fluttering my eyelids open until my mind caught-up and realized that I was in fact, alive.

And I wasn’t the only one.

I was already sitting-up in a dingy little bed, neatly made, but with shabby covers and a creaking mattress; everything felt like a dream, or a hallucination, even, because although my eyes were searching, they knew not what to search for. I was a child again, a tiny toddler, unsure of the correct way to act and think, not knowing a single thing about anything, content to sit on the bed and stare into the abyss in front of me, perfectly at ease with my existence. The small motel room looked as if it once belonged in a resort of some kind, now only a fraction of the size and run-down enough where the character on the other side of the room seemed to fit perfectly, unlike myself.

 

The enchanting sounds escaping from an aging piano were the sounds that had lured me into consciousness.

 

 _Sun-Joon_ , I thought suddenly. _My name is Sun-Joon_. _How do I know that for sure?_

To fill in a few of the puzzle pieces, I tried grasping the little details around me, only noting that the walls were a dark grey color, there was no door or windows in the room, the lamp on the table by the bedside had no lightbulb, but was somehow giving-off light, and that there was no one else aside from me in the room but…but a…

 

_…What IS she?_

 

An absolutely _breathtaking_ creature was seated across the room, on an unsteady piano bench in front of an even older-looking piano, her slender, dry-knuckled fingers with lightly-painted fingernails ghosting over the white keys with an untouchable rhythm, somehow causing the sounds to sound powerful, despite the light touch, undeterred even by the irritating squeaks of the mattress I was now moving on, daring to sit-up further with my shaking Bambi arms, oddly desperate to see her fine details in a better light, despite my blank, utterly lost mindset. I suppose it’s typical for a young man to recognize the beauty in a woman during the most inopportune moments, through all the war and stressful situations, the gunfights and car accidents…or, in my case, when man finds himself lingering in an unknown dimension with no memories of how he got there, or memories of any relevant subject, really…

Looking upon this woman, the desire of remembering how I came to be in this world all but vanished from my heart. It had been replaced by a need to know this angel on a better level.

My eyes found their way to her hair first, the top layers shadowed with red strands, lingering between a warm light brown, like chestnuts, or a freshly oiled piece of wood, and a spark-filled hue of orange, cascading down in natural curls upon her left shoulder, which I then noticed was bare, revealing the creature’s milky, unmarred skin to the illuminating light from the corner of the room. The curls were angled by sleep, some strands fluffy, others a bit flattened and disproportionate to the rest—oh how I longed to run my hand over the top, to feel the velvety softness of each turn, each curl that led to another, and another, and another…they stopped right where the beginning of her sleeping garment began, the tips hardly grazing the blue silk fabric. The small size of the room allowed me to be within only a few feet of the mysterious woman, even with my position on the bed, which then granted me the absolute _honor_ of letting my gaze drift lovingly over her skin, hardly taking note that much of it was showing, more focused on the heavenly pureness of each white inch, each small patch of pinkness making her that much more charming as the seconds passed by.

Everything about this third-dimensional woman was just… _dreamlike_. I felt lightheaded just _looking_ at her, and that sensation grew when I recognized the circumstances most likely surrounding her exposed appearance. The royal blue silk nightwear didn’t match the rest of her features, though it made her figure look none-the-less desirable; part of the outfit was hanging off the angel’s shoulder, dripping all the way down to her upper back, revealing the small gap between her extended arm and the remainder of her body. With the shoulder-bones protected by the silk and the longer locks of the woman’s hair, I was left to behold her exposed leg peeking out from the opening of the risqué blue robe—from the angle I was sitting, the perfect thickness of her thigh, the shining glimmer of elegance that was her lower calf muscle, and the sweetness of her thin, tiny feet all become well known inside my head.

 

At this point in time, I knew nothing but this lovely figure in front of me, perfectly playing a dreary, heartbreakingly slow tune, managing to make each note sound like one of a harp sent from heaven, even though I somehow _knew_ that the piano had never been tuned in its lifetime.

 

All at once, the music stopped.

 

The woman’s hands remained on the keys, resting their muscles as the last note died in the silence of the room, though the song sounded far from over; at first, I thought maybe there was just a portion of the piece that called for absolute silence, and I remained so for thirty-seconds, only to realize that maybe she did not like to be watched as she played, and was disillusioned by hearing me sit up in the middle of her song.

A minute passed with no movements or words—the normal Sun-Joon would let this moment be, but wherever I was…this Sun-Joon was different.

“Can you tell me where am I?” I asked politely.

She gave no response, but I had a feeling she heard me speak, because her demeanor changed from dreamlike to aware. _Maybe she doesn’t speak Korean_ , I thought blankly, unable to conjure a thought whose topic wasn’t focused on this magnificent angel of music. _Why would she speak Korean? She looks Romanian or something…it wouldn’t make sense for her to speak Korean. But I don’t speak any other languages, much less Romanian…_

More silence followed my unanswered question, but I found myself not minding; I took this time to slide my feet off the edge of the bed, though my happily-curious attention was still locked onto the woman in front of the piano. My senses were slowly returning to me, allowing the soles of my feet to feel the odd warmness of the flooring, and permitting my nose to breathe in fresh, crisp air, like we were at the top of a mountain peak, or flying through the sky on the back of a soaring dragon. The angel still said nothing, not moving from her position as I remained seated, hands holding onto the bed not for security, but apparently just because the fabric was unbelievably soft. This place was starting to feel like… _home_. I can’t describe that feeling. I had only been conscious for a few minutes, only stuck here for what seemed like moments in unmanageable time, and yet…I felt at peace. I wasn’t caught-up in stressful thoughts concerning the fate of the world. I wasn’t thinking about money, or my house, or any other materialistic object that was now a distant, blurry memory in the back of my mind. Everything of that nature was missing—no painful recollections of love, no burning flashes of hatred against those who sin, no bittersweet deaths of family members…

Though my mind was blank of faces, names, numbers and other information that was, at one time, valuable to me, it knew that what little information I had now was more useful than any other junk drawers buried somewhere in my subconscious. I wasn’t uncomfortable. I wasn’t awkward about the current silence. I wasn’t bothered by anything, really...

 

Both Sun-Joon’s found that they loved it here. They really really loved it.

 

“You’re in sojourn.”

 

I blinked once at her statement, hypnotized by her even, nostalgic tone of voice—she hadn’t spoken in my native language, or anything remotely related to it, but somehow, I understood her response perfectly.

 

“What’s sojourn?” I tried to clarify.

She began playing the dark piano song again, this time, in a gentler manner, so that our conversation could be heard; however, this didn’t dull the fact that the music piece was so enrapturing I could hardly pay attention to our current moment.

“A place you will stay…temporarily.” She hummed.

_That sounds suspiciously like the after-life. Am I…did I DIE?_

“Am I dead?”

The woman must have been smiling, because I heard it in her next reply.

“No, Sun-Joon. You’re not dead.”

 

Before I had a moment to spiritually prepare myself for the big reveal, the angel of music turned in her seat, and looked directly at me.

 

Click. All my senses, all my desires and needs came rushing back into my body with one big gust of warm wind, shooting through my chest and into my heart, their rightful place amongst me. The puzzle pieces I felt a bit of fear searching for upon my wake fell together, slipping out from their hiding places underneath the rug, the piano, the blankets and pillows—they found their way towards me and slid into position, all gravitating towards each other like a magnet, flipping on a switch inside my mind in the meantime.

It was like…I could stay in this moment forever, for all of eternity, until the world clock ceased to tick.

Her eyes were blue. Crystal blue. The fine china shade made her hair look browner from the front, where the locks were parted sloppily down the right side, the curls bouncing above her forehead that lacked a single crease in the fragile skin. The woman’s cheeks were rosy, round, but became thinner where her chin began; the pale skin there was also pure and unmarked, even on her tiny nose, where I was surprised to find no patterns of light-colored freckles of any sort. The angel had no outstanding facial features, and yet, even with my lost memory, I had never seen anyone, or any _thing_ , for that matter, as unique and as breathtaking as she was. Her eyelashes were chocolate brown, curled and mussed from her sleeping position, and I found her slender neck and heart-shaped jaw as equaling as appealing. Those blue eyes were round, but lidded with secrecy and a haze over the color that made her look like she had just awoken from a beautiful dream…I really wanted to know what she had dreamt of. Did she wake-up and find herself in sojourn like me? Was this destiny, fate, that we would come together in this strange form of consciousness?

She was too beautiful for even the most serenity-filled clouds.

 

The real Sun-Joon would have peed his pants after making eye-contact with such a woman; by some miracle, this Sun-Joon was much braver.

 

“Who are you?” I asked calmly.

“My name is Eve.”

“Eve…”

For some remarkable reason, I found myself getting off the bed and making my way over to where the angel named Eve was sitting at the piano, having turned back around to face her music.

“What song are you playing, Eve?”

Being next to someone so heavenly should have sent me spiraling across the other side of the room, but here I was, standing right next to Eve as she continued to play the complicated string of notes printed on the page in elegant, ancient handwriting; there was no title to the song. There was, however, a few choice words scribbled underneath the empty space where the title should have been. The news wasn’t as shocking as it would have been in the old world I still remembered nothing about.

 

_Sojourn: for Sun-Joon_

 

“You look much younger than It said you were.”

Normal Sun-Joon would have replied in confusion, but this Sun-Joon simply looked down at Eve’s neutral expression as she took her ocean eyes off the music to glance upwards at me, still continuing with the song, as if she had already been memorizing it for an eternity just to prepare for this specific point in time.

“Are you sure I’m not dead?”

“I’m sure,” Eve nodded, glancing back at the music. A few seconds passed with only music as the stroke of conversation. “You asked where you were…would you still like to find out?”

“You said I was in sojourn; a place someone stays temporarily.”

“Yes. And do you know where your temporary place of residency is located?”

I had to think about that one for a minute. In the end, I gave Eve no answer, which she already expected, and collected her explanation as the song came to a turning point, hammering down note after note, darkness after darkness; it was as terrifying as it was pretty. A hidden kind of pretty that only some people can find in certain things. I thought it was sad that no one else was here to witness such a melancholy verse.

 

Music like that makes you think wonders you never noticed before.

 

“Your sojourn…is a world between worlds, you could say…” Eve explained, her words echoing with the piano strings. “It does exist…it _doesn’t_ exist…it’s located in the crack of two very different worlds, two drastically different forms of universe.” Her hands began to hit the soprano notes harder, while the lower keys became white noise behind the damning tune of desperate nonexistence. “It may contain something you’ve lost…something you wish would be found…your deepest fears, or your deepest desires…”

The song changed again, Eve lifting her fingertips from the soprano notes and fluttering them down to the middle portion of the piano, merging their beat with the lower keys. It was back to that same old melancholy song that seemed oddly familiar to me.

“Sojourn can be whatever you want it to be, Sun-Joon.”

 _Whatever I want it to be?_ I thought slowly. _What do I want…what does THIS Sun-Joon want?_

“Whatever I want…or whatever my heart thinks it wants?”

Eve smiled mildly at that, making my heart skip several beats—how could such a sight be completely brand-new to me, yet seem painstakingly familiar? My memory felt as if it had been picked by a sharp needle, unveiled to a source of light that revealed distorted images of pictures, moments, all with Eve and I, together, as one. I could faintly remember her body, her laugh, her hair in a different style, the beauty in her song…I don’t know why I felt this way about her. That’s just how things were.

If I felt that sense of familiarity with Eve, could that mean she’s part of _all_ my sojourns?

 

Or…will she leave me after this one diminishes?

 

_Woooosh!_

 

A startling windy noise to my right made me flinch and turn my head towards the dark wall from which it came; a large square window was emerging from the wood like magic, shining and glowing as if cheering “Look out me, look out me!”

Eve did nothing but continue playing.

I, Sun-Joon, in a strange turn of events, took a chance, and inched myself over to the window.

 

The song began to grow in pace, tapping faster into a steady, up-beat rhythm that reminded me of a chirpy little bird hopping from one tree to the next, too content with life to care where his destination was. Despite this change, the sound was still hushed, allowing me space in my own personal bubble to allow my thoughts to flow freely as I stopped in front of the magical window; I leaned my head forward, not giving any attempt to decode this transfixing sight, and letting myself find out what sight laid behind the looking glass.

A gasp fell out my lips.

The scene I saw…cannot be described in any form of verse, any line of poetry that would justify its…its… _entire existence_. There were mountains surrounding us, whatever sojourn we were drifting in, reaching higher and higher, touching the air of places unknown, with no beginning, and no end. Their rocks were a cool grey, with hints of white patches and snowflakes—I could tell because we were so close, so _close_ to this angelic figure of beauty. I wanted to call out “Hallelujah” to those peaks, as if that would somehow let them become aware of their inspiring, indescribable exquisiteness.

The floating white puffs of air floating by the mountains led me to understand that we were not on the ground—

 

We were in the _sky_.

 

The sky of this sojourn was certainly something to behold; I was sure that, not in any of my lives before this, if there were any at all, nothing could come close to this level of tranquility. What could defeat a landscape in which mountains stood proudly in a never-ceasing sky of blue, in which air tinted pink and purple roamed your lungs, in which there was no end of green and gold hues?

 

If perfection existed in my sojourn, this was it.

 

I would have lost myself in those clouds forever, had the mood not been destroyed by a spark of red glow beneath one of the lower mountain ranges below. Leaning my head against the glass to sneak another peek at this wonder, I was met with a deafeningly different sight:

Right where the hills met the clouds was a valley of exploding volcanos.

The overflowing lava was burning, blazing, jumping as high as the exploding forces allowed, desperately trying to seize and mar the untouchable scene above. The reds were the deepest reds, the glowing orange the brightest glow imaginable, and the sharp yellow flashes were nothing like those warm sunny glows I remembered from a deep memory. My feet became sweaty at the realization that the toasty temperature on the flooring was from this fiery roar of hatred, sin, all objects evil—everything was burning away, erased from existence beneath us. The kind of rocks down there were not ones of security.

They were stones made of change.

 _Why?_ I thought, not panicking, but not quite at-peace as I had been seconds earlier. _Why is it trying to ruin everything? Why won’t it just let us be?_

 

 _I think you know why, Sun-Joon,_ another voice spoke into our little world _. Remember? …Temporary. All things must change. Leaves change color. Sounds become in-tune. Gold is polished._

_All birds must relocate when winter arrives._

 

I slowly backed away from the window, taking tiny steps until I was facing the one named Eve once more; the piano stopped playing music. Silence overcame the sojourn, granting us unwanted reflection and unsettling feelings around us, around the mountains, the sky, the volcano below; the air provided not even a single background noise for my thoughts, throwing me under the bus as questions and shaking realizations hit my senses all of a sudden. A pin could have fallen, and we would not have heard its cry, because it was not meant to be heard. Whoever controlled this moment, lest it be Sun-Joon III, or someone else, did not want anything to be heard but our very souls, exposed and open as Eve and I both reflected on the current scene in which we were thrust into.

Although I was gifted with time to think this situation over, I found myself not wanting to.

If I figured the mystery out…did that end the climb?

 

“Sojourn.” I said softly.

The angel glanced over.

“Temporary…a temporary place of residence.”

Eve gave a sad, short nod, then looked away.

“Yes. Temporary.”

“…Eve.”

She didn’t look back up as I whispered her name, and the silence of our universe had never felt more damning. I stood my ground, however, asking a gentle question I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to.

“…What is it called when sojourn becomes permanent?”

“It doesn’t.” The creature answered. “Sojourn only has one antonym, and that is adventure. Permanent sojourn means a lifetime of death, not life itself. Temporary is part of the word temptation…”

Eve suddenly picked-up the song right where it left off.

“…And eternal temptation is known as the Beelzebub. The Devil. The Little Horn. Yetzer hara.”

She began to sway with the hypnotizing tune, her left sleeve falling further off the shoulder.

“Why am I in sojourn if it never lasts?” I asked.

 

Eve smiled, and closed her eyes.

 

“Sojourn is an adventure…is it not?”

 

_That’s true. Eve, mountains in skies, nostalgic piano songs, burning, bubbling volcanoes under our feet…_

_Quite a temporary adventure._

 

“So…temporary places…make up real life?” I questioned. “Adventure?”

 

“Tis up to you, Sun-Joon III.” Eve hummed.

 

I stood straighter at that reference, startled at the certain thought telling me that not in any of my sojourns had I told Eve that I was Sun-Joon the third.

 

That same old piano piece picked-up once more, loudly, but beating as a heart would, thumping between each wall and each corner of our tiny shared room; Eve now had a lighter smile on her petal rose lips, and following a moment of music, her words spoke straight to me again, her meaning never ceasing to be understood by my inner core.

“Maybe I’ll see you again, in another sojourn.” She commented hopefully, swiftly pressing the black keys. “Do you think so, Sun-Joon?”

Despite the gentle touch the piano was receiving, the sounds had never been louder, never having reached such a climax before this pinpoint of time.

I whispered a blank response like the old Sun-Joon would have.

 

“I hope so.”

 

The song of the seas responded to my words like a choir reacting to a conductor—the tempo rose, returning to that fluttering bird flight, caught between the wings and the stones of the lower keys, keeping-up by speeding their sounds to that of a still melancholy, but now sweet and nostalgic tune. Eve’s dry fingers swayed and slid over each piece of the puzzle, tapping, clicking, pressing with force and grace on the same occasion; I found my attention being captured once more, connecting the separate ballads with the views out the sparkling window to my right. I knew the song was coming to a close, because I could feel the scene outside sprinkling away, out of my grasp, out of my very memory as Sun-Joon III.

The last phrase of notes drove forward, sending out one last cry of desperation, wanting to keep the memory alive, but failing to overpower the blistering heat of the volcano below as it poured over our little abyss in the bright blue sky—

 

Eve pressed the final key. It echoed several times before finally coming to a close.

 

But I could still hear it.

 

And that’s the point…isn’t it? I can still hear the music. I can still see all the sights I saw, all because of that final note.

The sojourn is fading.

I was back in that first position again, sitting up-right on the dingy mattress as when I first came to; the only sight I saw before was Eve, seated at that old piano, her left shoulder bare and beautiful, the silk draping her pale skin, her wild hair fluffed and tussled. Now, looking at the same image, I saw so much more. I saw the mountains. I saw the birds flying. I saw the burning of the volcanoes. I saw a dark, deep song of sadness, and I heard the flapping of the happy memory song.

 

Everything was starting to become very dark as I stared at Eve’s backside, enchanted by the visions ahead, hinting of the next adventure.

 

_On to my next sojourn._

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Wattpad but I figured I might have a little more success on my fav fanfic website...or not, but that's cool.
> 
> Inspired by the painting "Sojourn" by Shari Cerney


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